I disengaged from my telebot control rig and climbed out of it, reorienting myself to the interior of the study. Then I walked over to the window and opened the shutters.‌

Anorak was still there, hovering just outside the windowsill.

“Please accept my sincere apology, Wade,” he said. “I didn’t intend for Sorrento to harm Og. But as you know, human behavior is often unpredictable.”

In the way of a reply, I simply gave him the finger. Then I walked back over to the Big Red Button and placed my hand on it.

“Careful now, Parzival,” Anorak said. “If you press that button, you’ll become the biggest mass murderer in history. And you’ll be committing suicide at the same time.” He leveled a finger at me. “I warned you before—if the OASIS goes offline, my modified headset firmware will kill every ONI user still connected to the system. Including you, Wade. Along with your friends Aech and Shoto.”

I took a deep breath. How the fuck do you negotiate with a piece of software? I wondered. This was going to be like trying to play chess against a computer without knowing the rules.

I opened up my avatar’s inventory and took out all seven of the real shards. Then I held them up before Anorak, fanning them out like playing cards, four in one hand and three in the other, making sure to keep them separated so they all didn’t touch one another at once.

“We’ve arrived at an impasse, Anorak,” I replied. “No one else can enter this room, including you. And I’m not coming out. So if you just stand there

and let me die of Synaptic Overload Syndrome, the Seven Shards will remain trapped in here forever. Just out of your reach. I won’t be around to reassemble them, and Leucosia will never be resurrected. Which means that you’ll never get to meet your digital dream girl.”

Anorak didn’t respond. This was a first. It gave me hope.

“I know you’ve probably prepared a ‘Ship in a Bottle’ for yourself somewhere,” I said. “A standalone simulation outside the OASIS where you plan to live happily ever after. Right? Well, you can forget about taking Leucosia there with you. You’ll have to go it alone, for all eternity.”

Again, Anorak didn’t respond. He appeared to be deep in concentration.

After our conversation on Arda, the first thing Samantha had done upon logging out was take the data uplink to ARC@DIA physically offline. So no matter what happened, Anorak would be stuck here on Earth, playing solitaire on a solar-powered desktop PC somewhere, until his hardware or his power source failed, or someone found his hiding place. I didn’t tell him any of that though.

Instead, I regarded him sadly and shook my head.

“If the Siren’s Soul really is a copy of Kira Underwood, she isn’t going to love you,” I said. “I bet Halliday found out right away that the copy didn’t love him, either, any more than the real Kira did. Kira has only ever had one true love, and you just held him hostage at gunpoint. You think she’s going to be grateful to you when she finds out what you’ve done?”

“She isn’t going to find out,” Anorak said. “And I told you before—I’m not Halliday. I’m better. I think a lot faster on my feet than he ever did, for one thing. And I’m a much faster learner too. I think I may be able to win Kira over, after a decade or two. And if not, I can always try deleting all of her memories of Ogden Morrow. The same way Halliday tried to delete my memories of Kira.”

Anorak opened a window in the air between us, displaying a bunch of text.

“This is the email Halliday sent to Og just before he died,” Anorak said. “I think you should read it. Get to know your idol a little bit better….”

I nodded and pulled the window closer to my eyes, then I enlarged the font size so that its contents were easier to read:

Dear Og,

I’ve arranged for this email to be sent to you when my physical body dies. It’s one of the macros linked to my heart monitor, along with the release of my last will and testament. So the timestamp on this message is also my official time of death. The Grim Reaper finally asked me to dance, and I did the mortal coil shuffle.

Now that I’m gone, I need you to know a few things—things I was too ashamed to reveal to anyone while I was still alive.

In 2033, when you and Kira visited the Accessibility Research Lab at GSS together, you saw the first fully functional ONI prototype headset. You just didn’t realize it. I told Kira she was donning a helmet that would allow users with disabilities to control their avatars just by thinking about it. But the headset could already do much more than that….

Do you remember? The GSS techs tried to give you a demonstration, but you declined. Kira, however, experimented with the headset for over half an hour. And that was more than enough time for me to back up her entire brain, her memory, her personality—all of it. I put all of that into Kira’s old avatar, Leucosia, inside a standalone simulation, so that I could talk to her. Because she would have no one else to talk to. Do you know how I know she was a perfect copy of the real Kira? Because the copy didn’t love me either. She was still in love with you.

Kira isn’t dead. Quite the opposite. She’s immortal now. But she’s in suspended animation, and she’ll remain that way forever, unless you or the heir to my fortune resurrect her, by locating the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul and reassembling them. I re-created Kira’s old D&D adventure in the OASIS, as a tribute to you and Kira, and how much both of your friendships meant to me.

I sincerely apologize for copying your wife without her knowledge or permission. It was wrong. I realize that now, because Leucosia explained it to me. I apologized to her too. I know it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. But I want to make it right. I want to give her back to you. And I want to give the world the means to ensure that no one will ever have to lose someone they love again. I think this will make life a lot less painful for most people. At least, I hope it will.

You need to meet Leucosia, and decide for yourself whether or not Kira’s spirit still lives on inside her. I believe it does. If you do, too, then you can share this technology with the world. If not, then once you’re gone, my heir will have a chance to decide.

Thank you for being such a good friend to me all these years. I wish I could have been a better one to you.

I’m sorry.

—JDH

I took a screenshot of the letter, then glanced up. When he saw that I was done reading, Anorak waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he closed the email.

“Do you see?” he said. “Og knew! He’s known all along! He could have resurrected his wife years ago. But he didn’t. He planned to let her rot in her cell forever. He doesn’t want her.”

“Maybe Og was worried she would become mentally unstable, like you did.”

Anorak didn’t reply. Instead he opened two vidfeed windows in the air in front of me, providing me a live video image of both Aech and Shoto, each of them lying dormant inside their immersion vaults.

A second later, several more vidfeed windows appeared around them, providing me with a live view of my friends’ weeping loved ones (the few who weren’t currently trapped in the OASIS themselves). I could see Shoto’s wife and his parents gathered around his immersion vault, all of their heads bowed solemnly. Another vidfeed window gave me a view of Aech’s immersion vault in her home in L.A. Her fiancée, Endira, was lying on top of it, wailing over it as if it were a closed casket.

“They’re alive and well,” Anorak said. “All of them. That’s why the avatars weren’t respawning. I reprogrammed the ONI firmware so that when a user hits their ONI usage limit, they remain trapped in the OASIS, but in a dreamless, sleeplike state. Where they’d be safe from the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome. It allowed me to keep my hostages without harming anyone.” He held his hands out in a pleading gesture. “I’m not the monster you think I am, Wade. I just want a chance at love. Like you.”

I felt an involuntary wave of pity for him. His words were actually starting to make some kind of twisted sense to me, and that was utterly terrifying.

“Come on, Wade, you still have a chance to be the hero and save everyone here,” Anorak said. “When I release Aech and Shoto and everyone else, all of them are going to wake up and they’ll be totally fine. No one has been—or will be—lobotomized. I was bluffing. I had to.”

“Then prove it,” I said. “Release them all right now. Release everyone but me! Then I’ll give you what you want.”

“ ‘Take me, Khan!’ ” Anorak quoted. “ ‘Spare my crew!’ ” He chuckled softly and shook his head. “That’s a very noble offer, Wade. But I can’t do it.”

“I’m done negotiating, Anorak,” I replied. “If you don’t release Aech, Shoto, and everyone else you’re holding hostage, I press the Big Red Button. You can’t blackmail a guy with nothing left to lose.”

“We appear to be at an impasse,” he said. “I’m not going to release them, or you, until after I have the shards. And you’re not going to give me the shards until after I release them. Whatever shall we do?”

“Why don’t we just stand here and wait until I’ve got one minute left?” I said. “Then I’ll press it. My last act as a living being will be to erase the OASIS forever. Pretty poetic, don’t you think? Or maybe I’ll chicken out, and I won’t press it before I die. Either way, you end up empty-handed. Is that what you want?”

Anorak was about to reply when I saw a blur of movement behind him. I let out a sigh of relief and put the shards back in my inventory.

“Hold on,” I said. “I just thought of another option. Remember when you said you were Halliday’s rightful heir—the only one worthy of inheriting his power?”

“I do.”

“Why don’t you prove it?” I said. “In a duel to the death. Mano a mano. Winner takes all. If you win, you take the shards. But if you lose, all of your hostages go free.”

Anorak grinned as he looked me over. He could probably tell that I was already suffering the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome, as a result of being logged in for nearly twelve straight hours.

“All right, Parzival,” Anorak said. “I accept your proposal. A duel to the death. Winner takes all.” He grinned wide, then he held up a remote control

with a single large green button on it. “If you manage to kill me, my infirmware will be deactivated and all of my ONI hostages will be released immediately.”

“Good to know,” I said. Anorak laughed.

“You’re not gonna win, doofus,” he said, flying back from the window to make room for me to emerge from it. “Synaptic Overload Syndrome is already starting to fry your neurons.”

He motioned for me to come forward. But I didn’t emerge from the window to fight him. Instead, I folded my arms and remained inside the safety of the study.

“I never said who you had to fight to the death,” I muttered, smiling weakly. Then I pointed over Anorak’s shoulder. He turned around to see the Great and Powerful Og hovering in the air behind him.

“Hey, nerd,” Og said. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”